a song of absolution and the desert
by ncfan
Summary: -Chiyo, Gaara- Gaara never had a chance. Now, Chiyo's giving him a new one.


**Characters**: Chiyo, Gaara, Karura (in spirit), Naruto**  
Summary**: Gaara never had a chance. Now, Chiyo's giving him a new one.**  
Pairings**: None**  
Author's Note**: Yet another "Chiyo's regrets" piece. Don't tell me you're getting sick of them; I still adore every moment of Chiyo-angst. In a purely professional sense, of course.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Naruto.

* * *

A good shinobi could smell death before they ever saw it, and Chiyo was one of the best. She could tell that there was death a mile away, even if Uzumaki Naruto tried vainly to insist that life still was there. Chiyo was not a master of self-deception.

She couldn't say she hadn't seen it coming.

_Why should he be so upset_? she thought, marveling at Naruto's tears. _Has no one taught this ignorant boy the facts of life? People die; it's a simple truth, an unequivocal reality. If the child hasn't learned that yet…_

But still… Maybe it was not meant to have been like this.

Chiyo closed her eyes. She _knew_ that what had come to pass ought not to have been.

Her grandson was dead. No, he'd been dead for a long time; it was just that physical life had finally been extinguished. Sasori had transformed into a stranger and died as such, bearing a carved wooden face that was so familiar and yet a foreign landscape. And now this.

For all her justifications—and there were many, one for every drop in the ocean—Chiyo had never been able to shake off the nagging pangs of guilt. There had been something wrong about the whole situation, something wrong with her confidence and convictions, something wrong with the entire series of events that had led down to a dying, demented Karura christening her son 'Gaara'.

No one could truly divine Karura's purpose; no one would ever be sure who it had been whom she hated enough to curse the village. Yashamaru had affixed the blame to her son and like adhesive it had stuck, but Chiyo had another anger: the village, for abandoning her.

And her, for the same reason.

And now, Chiyo was brought to bear with the bitter, inedible fruits of her labor. Not a strengthened Sunagakure. Not a Sunagakure that could stand triumphant over all others. Not even a place where children could sleep well at night knowing that they would be secure in their beds and know that no one would steal their lives away in the dark.

Only death.

Gaara laid before her, prone and quiet and especially dead. From this distance Chiyo couldn't just smell death but the beginnings of decay as well. Soon, the pale, marbled body that seemed to float in a sea of swaying, delicate green grass and lavender rue would fall to rot, meat falling off of bones to be scavenged by the dogs.

And Chiyo saw for the first time what his life had kept her from seeing. That he was small. And human.

And that he was their Kazekage, their leader, their protector.

Her responsibility, the burden to bear that she had always shirked and passed off to others.

Chiyo had been the one to damn him. She should have been the one to face that, every day.

It was easier to objectify Gaara and detach herself from him when she was able to think of him as a monster. A monster of her own creation, but still a monster and unworthy of care or devotion or love. And he had behaved like a monster, for such an interminable passage of time—_It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, she realized: if one was treated as a monster for long enough with no difference of opinion anywhere they would inevitably begin to behave as a monster, just to measure to what they were thought of_._ Gaara never had a chance._

But Chiyo knew of a way to give him a new one.

The jutsu had been one she developed with the help of Sasori and Yashamaru. They too had known how to use it though they'd never found cause, and nor had Chiyo before now.

It was so, so simple. Gaara had never had a chance as the jinchuuriki of the Ichibi no Shukaku. But, perhaps he would have one as nothing more or less than the Godaime Kazekage of Sunagakure no Sato.

Chiyo owed him that much.

She took a step forward, then another one, telling herself again and again that this could be done, that it was worth it, that she had an obligation—this was the only way Chiyo could persuade herself to walk. She loved life, loved the sensation of being alive even if her own life was a ruin in shambles.

But she loved her village more.

And Chiyo could hear the old voices calling up from the ground, spirits locked in the air, urging her onwards.

_My son, my son you cursed. And now he lies dead for his curse. This is the price I paid for my village, the price I didn't want to pay. How can you do anything less?_

She knelt, and stared.

Gaara, Chiyo realized for the first time, had far more delicate features than what was natural for a Sabaku. He almost looked like a Yuuhi—bore an uncanny resemblance to Sasori, as it happened, whose mother had been from the Yuuhi clan of Suna. But Chiyo knew that it was from his mother that he'd inherited his delicate appearance, the seemingly but so deceptively frail cast of the wrists and elbows.

The son of the Yondaime Kazekage, the son of Chiyo's kunoichi student. His death cried out to her, her mistakes, her faults, darkening his flesh.

_Sing a song of the desert when you wake up, as you have always done. I have always watched you, wondered what to do with you, if anything at all. Now I know, now I can hear you singing even though you have been silenced._

_You sing of the desert. You sing of the sand that flies through the air. You sing of the night watches over moon-washed dunes. You sing of all things great and small to be found there._

_You sing of your own place, the only place you have ever known, the only place you've ever had._

_You will have a new place to sing of when you wake up. Just as we all will. I know you'll be alright.  
_

Now, her path was more clear than it had ever been before.

Her own song, as she died, would be of absolution.


End file.
